Building a Painting

So today I’m not in the mood to paint (been doing a lot of that lately!) I’m in the mood to write. And I want to share with you some of the creative process that goes into a painting. I have been expanding my knowledge using acrylic paint. It is a different way of working than when using charcoal and pastel and it feels different as well. I feel as though I can be a bit more expressive when using paint and you can really build up a picture using lots of layers, which adds interest to the picture and hopefully a richness of colour and depth as well. The beauty of acrylic paint is that you can also rework areas, if necessary, because the paint dries quickly and you can just go over what you did previously (rather handy sometimes) and then that adds another layer of interest!

So, I wanted to paint a bouquet of flowers – not too realistically, but with enough form that you can tell what it is. I’ll leave abstract for another day in the Studio! I also wanted to do something quite dramatic with a dark background, reminiscent of the Dutch still life paintings but with a contemporary feel.

The first layer is always fun.

Using paint and water I loosely build up the shape of the bouquet together with the background using 4 colours, mixing the paint on the canvas as I go. At this point I’m also thinking about where the dark and light parts are. You can get quite messy here by adding water and moving the canvas around to make interesting drip lines.

When that’s dried, I add more colours and more layers of detail on the flowers. And here is the finished painting.

Personally, I rather like the first image, after the first layer of paint went onto the canvas! I’d love to know if you do too and what you think of the completed version. Feel free to leave me a comment. I’m off to plan some abstract creations….. thanks for reading.